When It Pours
by DMitchell
Summary: Who says that rain is all bad? [Cloud . Rufus]


**Title:** When It Pours

**Author:** DMitchell1985

**Beta:** Dreamatcher

**Rating:** PG-13

**Summary:** Who says that rain is all bad?

**Word Count:** 2375

**Disclaimer:** I think we know by now that I don't own these beauties, but I'd sure'd like to! Why can't Squeenix just share like everyone else?

**Warnings:** None, really. Just the slash and the **AU** post-game setting.

**Spoilers:** Some game/movie spoilers.

**Pairings:** Cloud/Rufus, and mentions of: Rufus/Turks, Turks/Turks, Cloud/Vincent, Cloud/Tifa, and Cloud/Tifa/Vincent (Hey, you have to go all out where pairings are concerned. D )

**Author's Notes:** I am in love with the FFVII generator so much, that I should be ashamed of myself for cheating on all of my other pairing generators with it. As always, thank you to my talented beta, Dreamcatcher. Oh, and other notes are at the bottom.

**-**

_It smelt like rain_, Rufus noted and turned his back to the open window. It had been too long since he was able to freely breath in the world around him without the stench of decaying skin clogging his nostrils. That was the thing they didn't tell you about Geostigma; that it manipulated all of your senses until you weren't certain you even possessed the ability to savor a warm meal.

The Stigma had made every inch of his skin sensitive to the lightest shifts of wind, but had dulled the unremarkable act of inhalation to halting gasps that made him feel as though he was forever on the brink of an imminent head cold. He had longed for the effortless ability to be able to trace his fingers over a swatch of fabric and feel every thread that composed its count.

Those small victories had returned to him with each passing day since the blessed shower that had effectively loosened Jenova's grip on Edge's population. He had had to relearn it all. The sensation of a lung being filled until it could naturally take no more. The freedom of wearing garments that did not stick to his skin when his sores broke open and allowed dark pus to run down his arms. The man he had been forced to become was grateful for it all, even the lingering hatred that lay in the hearts of the people who had once feared Shin-Ra's wrath. It meant that he was finally living after too many years of simply existing to participate in one failed plot or another.

He knew that he had never been able to experience all that life had to offer before, as he had been so preoccupied with leveling his father and consuming what was left of the company. But now, he took the time to listen to the soft patter of the first raindrops fall onto his apartment's windowsill. He considered closing the window, closing out the world just beyond it, but thought better of it. Let a few raindrops come in. It was time that he willingly let something, anything at all, come into his private refuge.

**-**

Cloud sat at the edge of the cliff where he had once come to mourn Zack's defeat; where he had come to mourn his own endless faults and failures. In the months since Sephiroth's last reappearance, the guilt and pain had all but shifted away to become a moderate ache that only flared occasionally, like a sore knee that marked a past wound and gave a mighty twinge when storm clouds were coming.

The self-imposed moments of solitude had evolved to something more. Something more befitting of properly honoring Zack's life. He had taken the Buster Blade back to the Seventh Heaven and kept it there as a reminder of the sacrifices made by others to help him grow into the SOLIDER he had always longed to be. Albeit, several years too late.

But as Tifa always said, it truly was better to accomplish a goal later than you planned to than to never feel the satisfaction of having done so at all. He smiled to himself and thought of the hours he spent removing the leeching rust from the sword's surface to restore it to its pristine state. Despite his steady hand and familiarity with the blade, he had cut himself six times while cleaning all of the rust and dirt away. At one point, he nearly severed his right index finger.

He had taken it to be his final penance for stealing what was never his to begin with. However, as he shifted on the cliff's newly grown grass, he wondered whether the blade born anew was simply satisfying its blood lust. It was said that a sword owner should pay their blades an offering of blood themselves before their weapons sought it elsewhere.

Cloud had always thought the sentiment to be a tad zealous on the parts of sword owners he knew in the past. Now that he had carried and cared for a blade of his own over the past few years, he was beginning to think that those old tales were true. He could no longer see why they couldn't be. Swords seemed to have a spirit all of their own at times.

As his mind turned to follow the thought, the first drops of rain fell lightly into his hair. He frowned at the dark clouds that had drifted in with such speed, he had not been aware of their approach. He knew then that he must have been there longer than he realized, because the sky had been a clear, even blue when he had arrived.

He pushed himself up from the ground and gave the cliff one last look before walking over to the distant patch of grass on which he had parked his bike. He never brought the bike up onto the cliff itself, because it would have been too much. It would have been more disrespect in addition to all the other injustices he had committed.

He swung his leg over Fenrir, nudged the kickstand up, and turned the key in the ignition. Perhaps there truly was more to this life than fading memories and guilt that needed several crises to free its claim on him.

**-**

Three days later, Rufus sat back in his office chair and watched the rain continue to fall. The lower-set cities had begun to flood in the face of the constant downpour. When the rains first began, everyone around him had rejoiced at the coming of Spring and its many possibilities. Three days into the joyous Spring's herald, and the world's citizens had been reduced to grumbling that it was always 'too much' and never just 'enough'.

Rufus had chuckled silently to himself on the first day. By the second, his amusement began to wane. By this afternoon, his mouth was set in a closed-lipped frown. Someone would have to clean up the mess once Nature was done doing her share for the Planet. That someone would invariably be Shin-Ra, since Shin-Ra had taken so much.

Rufus sighed aloud then. He could not help but speculate if the company's debt would ever be repaid in full to the Planet or her people. Probably not in his lifetime, or even that of any heirs he might still produce.

Heirs. There was _that_ word again. It was unofficially agreed amongst himself and his Turks that _that_ word would be removed from their respective vocabularies until such time that he figured out a way to work around his decreasing interest in all things feminine. It had started gradually, as work and politics proceeded to greedily take more and more of his daily life for themselves.

He had attributed his declining number of visits to his lovers' apartments to partake in his casual arrangements first to work, then to stress, then to Geostigma, and finally to nothing at all. For what else could he blame when the company had all but been put back to rights and the Stigma had fled?

Despite his reluctance to visit any of the others, there was still one exception. Elena. He still visited her when she was not spending the night with Tseng or Rude or Reno. It was more out of habit. It was their established routine that bonded them closer together than anything else these days. He liked it that way. It was the purest form of safety his Turks could ever offer him, and he them in return.

On more than one occasion, he had considered simply employing Elena to bear him at least one child of whatever sex was to come. But he didn't ask it of her, even though he knew that she would agree without a second thought. He had already asked so much of Elena that he could not steal away her option of having a future of her own. Maybe she and Tseng would finally settle down in Wutai and have a family of their own. Who was he to infringe upon their happiness? Rufus Shinra he might be, but even he realized that he should draw the line somewhere.

His office phone's intercom buzzed for a moment before his secretary's voice rang out loudly, shattering the fragile silence of the room.

"A Mr. Cloud Strife is here to see you, sir. Shall I send him in or are you still in your meeting via phone conference?"

'Still in your meeting'. It had been their code to gauge whether he wished to see a particular visitor or not, dating back to the days when Lucia had originally been employed to be his secretary. After he had chased numerous dead leads to relocate the woman, they had slipped back into their comfortable work day pattern as though the years apart had meant nothing at all. In a way, he supposed that they didn't.

He pressed the button on his phone that would allow him to answer her. "No. The meeting's finished. Send him in." He could hear Lucia informing Cloud that he could go into the office behind her. He heard the click of the doorknob turning echo faintly through the intercom, only to watch Cloud Strife walk into the office in front of him.

Rufus pressed the intercom's button once more. "Lucia, hold all of my calls," he said into the machine, not taking his eyes off of the man approaching his desk.

"Yes, sir," she answered smartly and the intercom went quiet.

"It's good to see you, Cloud. How are Tifa and the children?" Rufus leaned forward and gestured for Cloud to sit in one of the chairs in front of his desk.

Cloud removed his sword to lean it against the front of Rufus' desk before he perched on the edge of the leftmost chair. "Well. And yourself?"

"I can't complain personally, but this damned rain is another situation entirely." Rufus twisted his lips into a half smile.

Cloud returned the smile with a slight twitch of his own lips. "I know what you mean. Some areas have started to flood."

"I know. That's why I've asked you to come. Shin-Ra is gathering relief workers to help aid the areas affected by the worst of the rains and subsequent mudslides. Up for it?"

Cloud laughed softly and leaned back in his chair, propping his right ankle upon his left knee. "I should have known."

"Yes, you should have. Besides, how are we supposed to be a kinder, gentler Shin-Ra, if we don't send anyone to help?"

"Kinder, gentler on the surface, you mean?"

"Appearances count, too, if not more so than actual effort."

Cloud shook his head slowly and looked up at the President through several strands of hair that fell into his face. "What do I, and presumable anyone I bring with me, get out of this?"

"Contentment in the knowledge that you spent time helping other living beings."

"I have that contentment every day, but I don't work for free, Rufus. You know that. Not all of us can take unlimited time off from their day jobs and still have full bank accounts."

It was Rufus' turn to laugh then. "I suppose not. What is it that you want? Your going rate for a long-distance delivery?"

Cloud smiled to himself. He had been waiting for Rufus Shinra to ask him that very question for longer than anyone realized. He had tried settling down with Tifa to take care of the orphans. He had tried screwing Vincent until they could not distinguish where one began and the other ended, but nothing had come of the ventures except the occasional tumble into the sack and the rare, shared indulgence between the three of them.

Cloud refused to allow himself to shift in his chair in his excitement. When negotiating with a Shinra, it never helped a hopeful trader if they knew that you wanted something from them with any urgency. It only gave them the upper hand, and they did not hesitate to use it.

He made show of contemplating what he wanted, but the words he yearned to say blared inside his mind, looping over and over again in hopes of convincing him to say them aloud. He opted to rephrase them significantly before opening his mouth to speak.

"I want a weekend for me and everyone else at the Healin Lodge. We'll need at least two days to warm up again and scrub all of the dirt from beneath our fingernails if we are headed where I think we are."

Rufus nodded as he thought over the simple demand in exchange for asking Cloud to return to his hometown of Nibelheim. He knew that the man still had unresolved issues with the town, try as he might to forget or release them. A weekend at one of his personal retreats was a small price to pay to get Cloud within ten miles of Mt. Nibel. "Okay," he agreed. "A weekend at the lodge. Anything else?"

"Yeah, there is."

"Oh?"

"I am certain that I will need someone to fetch me a drink or give me one of those specialty massages I've heard so much about."

"Not to worry. There is a full staff on-hand to assist you in every manner conceivable."

"I do not think you understand. I am going to need someone in particular. Someone I am certain has plenty of experience with both and can deliver said services on command from memory alone." Cloud smiled openly and elevated his eyebrows meaningfully.

"Someone in particular? One could only guess who that person could be." Rufus gave a genuine grin of his own. "What does this person get in return for this little extra?"

"It is not an extra to me," Cloud assured Rufus. "But I suppose that if it were, he could have anything he wanted. Anything at all."

Cloud got to his feet, picked up his sword, and swung it towards his back. "Call me with the details later. I've got a delivery to make."

Rufus merely nodded in response, but Cloud was certain that he could hear soft laughter behind him as he closed the office's door on his way out.

**-**

**The End**

**Author's Note:** I didn't make that up about newly-created blades and blood offerings. This was something I actually read in the past about warriors offering their blades their own blood to temper the sword and prevent it from seeking out satisfaction elsewhere. -shrugs- I suppose that it makes sense on some level.

As for the new Shin-Ra, the company rebuilds itself with Rufus and the Turks' help to become a nicer-ish company in my world. This is in addition to Reeve's environmental efforts.

As for Cloud not bringing his bike onto the cliff, I can't remember whether he did this or not. In my version, he didn't, so I am sticking with that.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed the fic. D


End file.
